1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an earphone system and a terminal equipment system with the same, and more particularly to an earphone system including a remote control unit, and a terminal equipment system to which the earphone system is applied.
2. Description of the Related Art
An apparatus in which a sound equipment and a portable telephone are made as a unit is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei 05-091584). In this apparatus, an earphone unit is connected to a portable terminal equipment. The earphone unit is provided with a microphone, dial keys and function keys for a portable telephone. The earphone unit is also provided with a pair of earphone speakers. Thus, communication is made possible in the state in which the portable terminal equipment is accommodated in a bag or pocket. Also, it is made possible to listen to speech and music from a sound equipment. Further, it is made possible to use the portable terminal equipment as a portable telephone.
It is desirable in this type of earphone that a use position of a control section of the earphone unit is limited such that the speech of a user can be appropriately collected and such that it is made easy for the user to see and to operate, when the user sets an earphone in the ear. Also, the control section needs to be made small in size and light in weight for the use purpose, of course.
However, in the above-mentioned conventional earphone unit, the plurality of dial keys and plurality of function keys for the portable telephone are provided in the control section. As a result, the control section is required to have the size corresponding to the keys, resulting in increase of the weight. Thus, it is difficult to make the remote control operation section small in size and light in weight.
Also, if small dial keys and function keys are used for the small size and lightness of the remote control operation section, the operability is degraded. It becomes a factor of any erroneous operation.
Further, when the control section is fixed on a pocket of the chest with a clip to limit the use position of the remote control operation section, the operation of the control section is difficult in the fixed state of the remote control operation section.
In addition, because it must be removed from the pocket in case of use, it is troublesome. Also, there is the possibility that the position of the microphone changes during the communication so that the sound collection characteristic of the microphone changes, resulting in degradation of the speech quality.
Otherwise, there are various proposals to listen to a sound or to see an image.
For instance, a speech transmission method using light transmission is described in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Showa 60-199245). In this reference, a sound signal from a first sound equipment such as a television is converted into a light signal and emitted. The light signal is received and converted into an electric signal by a second sound equipment which is located apart from the first sound equipment. Thus, sound is transferred from the first sound equipment to the second sound equipment.
Also, a telescope with an optical type speech communication apparatus is described in Japanese Laid Open Utility Model Application (JP-U-Heisei 2-44710). In this reference, a telescope is provided with a light transmitting section composed of a microphone, a modulator, a light emitting element, a cold filter and an object lens, and a light receiving section composed of an earphone, a demodulator, a light receiving element, a cold filter and an object lens.
A telephone with a hearing aid is described in Japanese Laid Open Utility Model Application (JP-U-Heisei 7-14742). In this reference, an adapter 3 composed of a microphone 4, an amplifier 5 and a light emitting element 6 is attached to a speech receiving section 1 of a telephone. A speech signal from the speech receiving section 1 is converted into a light signal by the light emitting element 6. The light signal is received by a light receiving element of a hearing aid 9, and is amplified and outputted from an earphone 13.
A remote sensing apparatus is described in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei 6-98281 which corresponds to a U.S. patent application Ser. No. 844072 filed on Mar. 2, 1992). In this reference, a remote sensing apparatus (50) containing at least one of a display (88), an earphone (91) and a microphone (90) is connected to a driver (65, 74) by an optical link (80).
A method of individually receiving sound broadcasting is described in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei 7-154322). In this reference, each of users has a light signal receiver 4. A light signal transmitter 2 has a limited transmittable zone and provides information in the form of light signal. When the user enters the transmittable zone, the information is transferred from the transmitter 2 to the receiver 4 using light communication. Then, the information is reproduced.
However, the above-mentioned references never improve the operability and controllability of an equipment.